For all our tomorrows, and our todays

Climate change will not go away during our lifetime, says Dimitris Dimitriadis, president of the European Economic and Social Committee. But action to counter global warming can benefit us as well as our children’s grandchildren.

The joint award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the scientists who make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was welcome affirmation that we must move on from the debate about whether global warming is truly occurring to a still more urgent debate: what to do about it. Following the success of the March 2007 summit of European Union leaders, with its ambitious pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2020, we Europeans have tended to see ourselves as having set an example to the rest of the world. This is undoubtedly right (though the example was flawed and already risks being tarnished by back-tracking), but it is far from enough. We badly need to widen and deepen the political and popular debate about climate change and global warming.

Consider, first, the time-scales involved. The longer term consequences of dealing with nuclear waste introduced the concept of our obligations to future generations into everyday political discourse. But global warming takes this concept onto another plane. The Stern Report rightly pointed to the economic consequences of inaction, but few among the political classes have yet pointed to the awkward fact that the benefits of acting now will only be realised by future generations. Suppose tomorrow we managed to stabilise or reduce the levels of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere; the IPCC’s work tells us that the world would continue to heat up – with all that this would mean for melting ice-caps, rising sea levels, extreme weather events, etc – for at least a century. Most Europeans have somehow got the impression that global warming can be halted and reversed within their lifetimes, but it cannot be. If we combat global warming now, it is for the sakes of the grandchildren of our children.

Just how far ahead are we prepared to spread our generosity? Just how far ahead are we able to conceptualise benefits? All the more reason, then, to stop portraying measures to brake or reverse global warming as a zero-sum game. There is limited mileage in leaders and politicians lecturing their people about short-term pain for longer term gain if that longer term happens to be, to echo John Maynard Keynes, long after they are dead. But the game is not zero-sum. To take an example, reductions in greenhouse gases mean cleaner air, and that in turn means healthier people with greater well-being and less healthcare. We should be putting more effort into developing this aspect of the debate. What we do to combat global warming – from energy savings through to greener transport policies – happens to be good for us as well. Perhaps we should even consider switching the terms of the debate around; in the first place, such measures will help us, but they will also combat global warming and so benefit future generations.

Europe needs also to own up to its own future, relative to the futures of tomorrow’s economic powerhouses – China, India, Russia, Brazil, and so on. Suppose we manage to achieve the ambitious objectives our leaders set us at the European Council in March. By 2020 we would have cut our emissions by at least 20%. Objectively, this would be commendable, but we have to bear in mind that, by then, our relative emissions, as a proportion of world emissions, would have shrunk (relatively speaking, the global trend would still be upwards) to just 20%. And 20% of 20% is just 4% – more than a drop in the ocean, but less than a finger in the dyke. There is an inherent paradox. The better you are at reducing carbon emissions, the less ‘weight’ you have among the big emitters and the less you have to trade. I am not for one moment suggesting that we should keep our carbon emissions up as a way to maintain our weight, but we have to be aware of the relative influence we will have by 2020.

Our importance and power will inevitably dwindle – hence the importance of throwing our weight about now by forcefully pushing multilateral approaches at Bali.

We need also to be more honest in explaining to our populations that global warming and climate change are not looming processes; they already exist. Heatwaves, flooding, violent weather events, new infectious diseases, changing agriculture and so on – these developments are already with us and, let us be frank, will not go away in our lifetimes. We urgently need to devote more of our political energies towards helping our populations adapt, from flood defences through to education campaigns about heat waves to protection against insects, and so on. We need better to involve civil society in these adaptations. There is no need for panic. Our civilisations are resilient. Mankind is ingenious. European leaders and the European Union have already shown their resolve.

But we can only seriously address these issues if collectively we shift the debate beyond simplistic notions about an impending process which, in reality, is already with us.